Fringe: Maria Benitez’s Flamenco Enchantment

Jaima Chevalier is a native of Santa Fe, New Mexico, with deep ties to her home state. After the extraordinary experience of spending the first few years of her life in the basement of New Mexico’s Laboratory of Anthropology, where her father worked as a janitor, the family moved to the Iron Horse Ranch, where she grew up without running water or electricity. Her first job at the ranch was to carry slop buckets to the pig pen.

Chevalier’s childhood was informed by the art colonies of Santa Fe and Taos, as well as the neighboring Pueblos. Chevalier’s mother taught at the Indian School in Santa Fe, and her parents restored a one room school house in El Guique, NM, near the Pueblo formerly known as San Juan. Her parents hung out with John Wadleigh (Oliver Lange), Charles Fair, J.R. Humphries, and many other members of the local literati.

For her recent book Nativo, Chevalier worked with series creator and screenwriter Oliver Galvan-de la Cruz, who traces his Indigenous heritage to the state of Guerrero, Mexico. The series contains approximately 80 episodes of content made for television and themed to what critics describe as “Pueblo Revolt of 1680 meets Game of Thrones.”

Chevalier’s current project, out now, is the title Fringe, on flamenco legend Maria Benitez. The book received the best biography award in the 2020 New Mexico-Arizona Book Awards.

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